Portsmouth football team among state’s ‘Power Four’

Sunday

Apr 26, 2020 at 1:57 PM

Bishop Hendricken, La Salle, North Kingstown and Portsmouth will stand atop the pyramid in the Rhode Island Interscholastic League

Charlie Bibeault knew this was coming.

Woonsocket High School’s football coach has received a Gatorade shower to end each of his last two seasons. The Villa Novans captured back-to-back Rhode Island Interscholastic League Division II Super Bowl titles by downing East Greenwich and Mount Pleasant, respectively.

The ultimate challenge for any program in the state has arrived. Woonsocket, the Avengers and Burrillville will move to Division I for the 2020 season after a proposed realignment to the Principals Committee on Athletics was approved on Thursday.

“When you win back-to-back championships, it’s not like you can be very surprised going up,” Bibeault said. “You kind of played yourself into that bracket.”

The state’s 43 programs will play for five championships — Power Four, Division I, Division II, Division III and Division IV.

Bishop Hendricken, La Salle, North Kingstown and Portsmouth will stand atop the pyramid. Portsmouth has approximately 450 male students while the other three Power Four schools have at least 700 male students.

“My guys decided — the coaches, administrators and players — to stay up,” Portsmouth coach Dustin Almeida said. “Whatever we’ve got to do to make football grow, we’re happy to do it. We like the challenge and I like to see the athletes rise to the challenge. I think it’s a credit to our community and how they view athletics and the support they give athletics.”

The Power Four schools will play games against each other and play crossover games against Division I foes during the regular season. The Hawks, Rams, Skippers and Patriots will then compete among themselves for the RIIL’s top title.

“There will be a competitive balance there, I think,” said South Kingstown athletic director Terry Lynch. “We’ll see how it shakes out.”

Bishop Hendricken beat Portsmouth in last season’s state championship Super Bowl. Cranston East was the last team to spoil what had become an annual Hendricken-La Salle matchup for the crown since 2013. Barrington was the last program other than Bishop Hendricken or the Rams to win the state’s top championship in 2009.

“With the public schools, it’s all cyclical,” Lynch said. “Some years we’ve been good and other years we haven’t — it’s who comes and what cycle it is.”

The Villa Novans have played in seven Super Bowls since 2003 — two in Division III and five in Division II. Woonsocket's short-term inability to recruit its own hallways and conducting workouts via Zoom will be the primary challenges for Bibeault. Gov. Gina Raimondo has officially shifted the state's schools to distance learning for the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year.

“It’s hard to increase those numbers,” Bibeault said. “This day and age, a lot of kids are turned off from football. A lot of kids don’t have that work ethic and want to commit to a program.

“We ask a lot of our kids, whether it’s weight room or study hall. A lot of kids don’t want to put that work in.”

The Villa Novans will play in Division I-A with Central, Cranston West, East Providence and South Kingstown. The Broncos, East Greenwich, Cranston East, Cumberland and Shea will play in Division I-B. Teams will fill a seven-game league schedule by playing each of their four divisional peers, crossing over for one game, playing one game against a Power Four opponent and playing one game against a Power Four, Division I or Division II opponent of their choice.

“I think it’s the best we could do in the situation where we’re at,” Lynch said. “There are basically three Division Is.”

Moses Brown drops into one Division II subset with the Kilties, Middletown, Mt. Hope, West Warwick and Division III runner-up Tolman. The Eagles and St. Raphael drop into another Division II subset with Lincoln, Rogers, Westerly and Division III champion Pilgrim.

Central Falls, Chariho and North Providence return in Division III. Classical, Coventry, Johnston and Juanita Sanchez/Providence Country Day drop from Division II while North Smithfield/Mount St. Charles and Toll Gate both move up from Division IV. The Northmen played in the last two Division IV Super Bowls and captured the 2019 title.